Aaron McBride has worked on every "Pirates of the Caribbean" film as the visual effects art director. He started his career in feature films at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) as a matte painting artist on "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace."
What exactly is a visual effects art director? (As distinct from an art director or a visual effects creator)?
A visual effects art director generates artwork to serve as a "look target" or visual guide for the CG artists, modelers, and viewpainters. Often times early in pre-production we will generate design concept art for characters, vehicles, environments, or particular effects. Then, once a design has been approved by the director we will do supporting artwork for the CG artists, technical directors and compositors of how a creature or vehicle will look in a shot or sequence of the final film once it is textured and lit.
Were there any specific achievements in the "look" and "style" that your team wanted to achieve above and beyond the first three films?
One of the challenges of designing a look for the mermaids was that, in the previous three "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, the supernatural creatures were, by design, monster-like and frightening. The Mermaids were these supernatural creatures that needed to be beautiful, seductive sirens which we hadn't seen before in the previous "Pirates" films. They were not the rotting cursed skeletons or encrusted with the marine life like the creatures in the previous films had been ... but they needed to look like they belonged in that same world.
Was it ever considered or storyboarded that the mermaids might be more "fish" or "monstrous looking" or were they always supposed to be beautiful at least on the surface?
We did a lot of concept art early on where the Mermaids were much more monstrous and creature looking and then [tried] to strike that balance between sea creature and the beautiful seductive siren. We played with adding more elements to them that would make them look more like predatory fish. Early concepts had serrated, razor-like piranha teeth. Some had shark teeth and distended jaws like a shark. We explored giving them serrated dorsal ridges and very silvery skin like a swordfish. And those lifeless black eyes like a great white.
Were the mermaids fully CGI motion capture or actors with an effects added tail?
The mermaids were a combination of many of those techniques. We ranged from completely digital mermaids to the actors, which were digitally augmented. Sometimes, as in the case with Gemma Ward's character when we see the mermaid's face close-up as she comes in for the kill, it was her on set but then we added some digital elements to her appearance: sharper teeth and a slight sense of shimmery fish scale qualities to her skin.
[Director] Rob [Marshall] really wanted to retain as much of the actors' true beauty appearances in their faces as possible. They needed to be these creatures that had evolved to be the perfect seductive predator. The idea was that they could appear very beautiful but that their actions should be very vicious like ferocious animals.
Having contributed to all four films in the "Pirates" franchise, are there any characters or designs that really stand out for you?
The "cursed" pirate characters that served on Davy Jones crew were really fun and challenging to work on. I especially liked working on the hammerhead shark Pirate character, Maccus from "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." In addition, the jellyfish Pirate, and Wyvern, the crusty Pirate embedded in the wall of the Flying Dutchman.
For more articles by Eric Shirey, check out:
Original 'On Stranger Tides' Novel Paired with New 'Pirates of the Caribbean' Movie
'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides' Action Figures and Blackbeard's Pirate Ship Play Set
Depp's 'The Lone Ranger' May Not Ride Again
Heading to the movies? Get an instant mobile coupon to use at select theaters for free popcorn!
There are no comments yet